


impostor syndrome

by arahir



Category: Among Us (Video Game)
Genre: A Story, About death, Enemies to Lovers, M/M, about VENTS, about love, elite impostor falls for dumbass crewmate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:02:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26671084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arahir/pseuds/arahir
Summary: Dumbass crew newbie hides in the vents and makes a friend. In unrelated news, local impostor is having a really weird day."You've got something there," Green motions to Black's chest, which has a splat of dark liquid across it."It's… oil. From the, you know. The rear axial. Distributor." He waves at a panel on the wall, a panel which Green thought was an extra trash chute, but evidently not."Thanks," Green says, and means it. "Sometimes it feels like I'm the only one who actually cares about getting us all out of here alive, you know?"
Relationships: Crewmate/Impostor (Among Us)
Comments: 415
Kudos: 4574
Collections: A Labyrinth of Fics, Among Us, Anodyne fics





	impostor syndrome

**Author's Note:**

> ETA: these are my ocs. the streamers you might be thinking of chose to main the colors i used in this fic after i wrote and posted it, and this fic and i have nothing to do with them. ironically, i picked these colors to avoid ship color drama from a previous fandom... more fool, i.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck—" 

They warned him about this before he took the assignment, but somehow significant personnel injury really didn't really prepare him for the bisected massacre in the MedBay, and oddly his first thought is, _Shouldn't he be on a bed?_

There are no doctors on the _Skeld_. They brought a skeleton crew to do repairs. Something got into the wiring, MIRA said. Cleanup and do maintenance, MIRA said. Don't take off your helmet, it's just a precaution, we have an 87% crew return rate, MIRA said. Very little in the handbook about bisection or fatal injury, and now Green is thinking he might have misunderstood what crew return rate meant. 

Well, they didn't hire him for his reading comprehension, did they. 

They didn't hire him for his ability to clean, either. The amount of blood sliding across the floor is—it's not great. Do they have mops, even? There's one in storage, but...

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees movement, and has a moment to thank his luck that he's not the only one that's going to have to figure out what to do about this before he hears a beep and the tell-tale creak of the metal hatch doors sliding shut behind him. 

Something comes over him in that moment. Something primal, something instinctual. 

It's time to get the fuck out.

The doors aren't an option for obvious reasons. The beds he could maybe hide under if he weren't wearing almost fifty pounds of MIRA issue gear. His mind cycles through the closets by the doors, the visual scanner, the vent—

The vent. It's askew an inch, two screws lying beside it, probably evidence of someone even more of a slacker than him who got halfway through a repair and gave it up for the cafeteria. He sends a mental thank you to Yellow, or maybe Red, neither of whom do shit on a daily basis, and in a feat of acrobatics that surprises even him, leaps over the body and pool of blood both. 

He rips the lid of the vent off and hey, it's not roomy, but it's better than ending up like the poor sap behind him. Feet first he drops inside. 

It's a long drop, it turns out.

He hits the bottom hard and then tries to orient himself. Pitch black, nothing but the light on the inside of his helmet, and his own breathing is suddenly deafening. With his hands outstretched he starts inching his way into the dark, and that's when It starts to sink in. The body, the door—someone is dead. Someone wants him dead. When was the last time he saw anyone? It's not like MIRA pays for inter-suit comms. Maybe Red, outside engines, at the corner of his eye. 

Was he in that room alone? Did anything... follow him?

He turns, as if the dark will show him anything, and then turns back, and suddenly there's a wall where there wasn't one before. He bounces off and stumbles back and—

The wall behind him is soft, which seems wrong. It says, "What the fuck," when he hits it, which also seems off.

Green tries to scream, but both his lungs and heart have resettled around his throat and it's a wonder he's not on the floor in a dead faint.

"You're supposed to be in O2," the wall says. 

Less a wall, more a person. 

Green makes himself take a breath and scrambles for words. "I—I was in engines, I was doing wiring, and I thought like, hey no one has done the scan in the MedBay and, and I walked in and there was a _body_ I swear man, I swear he was cut in half and then the doors shut—I had to get out and—"

Was he supposed to be in O2? 

"...Green?" The wall asks. 

"Yes!"

"How did you get in here?"

"The vent."

There's a stretch of silence before the wall sighs. Whoever it is steps away and Green has to stop himself from grabbing after the body, because suddenly the only thing worse than being trapped in the MedBay with half a body is being trapped in the vent alone.

"Are you hiding, too?" Green asks, just as an excuse to hear a reply.

It takes a moment, but the reply comes from a few steps away. "Yeah." That single word manages to be such a mix of sardonic and tired. They all deal with stress differently. No telling how long they've been trapped in here. 

"How do we get out?" 

No reply, but the sound of footsteps. He almost calls after, almost panics, but then a hand grabs his and pulls him after. The grip is reassuringly firm. When they get to the end of the passage, it releases him, and then light streams in from above as the vent is pushed open. His companion is up and out before his eyes have even adjusted, and then there's a hand on his shoulder, pulling him upward by the scruff of his suit and into the stark light of—

The MedBay.

The body is still on the floor. Green looks at it, and then up to the person standing beside him, and no wonder he couldn't see it was Black in the dark. "Why did you bring us back here?" Green asks in a voice that sounds smaller than it should. 

Black turns to him slowly, silently, and then raises his hand—

"Black?"

—and pulls the emergency lever on the wall.

"We've got a body in the MedBay."

* * *

The next few minutes are a haze. Everyone has to get a gander at what's left of Pink, and that's fair, though Green wishes maybe he could opt out. He spends the whole time by the vent, behind Black, who has his arms folded and for all the world seems bored with the whole thing, like dealing mutilated corpses is another part of the job for him. 

In the end they sort of roll what's left of the body over onto a sheet and leave it on one of the beds before making their way to the cafeteria to talk things out. It still hasn't been cleaned up from lunch, or from breakfast before that. Green follows Black in, only half hiding behind him. 

Once they're all standing around the main table, it's White that starts. It's not like any of them out rank the others to give orders, but she puts in a good effort at it anyway. 

"I'll cut to the chase—one of us did this. Black? You found him?" 

No names on the _Skeld_. MIRA says color coding is easier, personal entanglements less common. Or, that was the reasoning in the handbook at least.

"I did, actually," Green says, now only one third behind Black and keeping it that way. "I walked in and kind of, well, saw the whole situation and thought hey, that's not right. And then the doors shut and I panicked—"

"That's when we ran into each other," Black interjects, which is more or less what happened and easier than admitting he got turned around in the ventilation system.

"Why didn't you report the body?" White asks. 

"How do you report a body?" 

Well, he knows _now,_ but at the time the emergency lever was really more of a peripheral thought, as MIRA training strongly suggested that use of the lever should be reserved for emergencies, and that no emergency was really an emergency if you tried hard enough. 

Expressions are pretty hard to sus out what with the double pane on the helmets, but the way they all share glances is at least a little bit enlightening, and okay, come on. "Seriously? I'm supposed to know how to report a corpse? A dead corpse?"

"Is there another kind?" Black asks. 

"Let's take this seriously—" White starts, and fuck White.

"What the hell were you doing this whole time anyway? I'm out here fixing wiring and aligning engines and, and climbing around in the—"

Black reaches out and grabs his arm, hard. "In the engines, yes, we know."

What… the hell. Black only stares at him, faceless and wordless, and then squeezes his arm gently, and it takes Green until that moment to get it. Right. If there's someone or something on this ship capable of turning a whole human into half a human, and the only hiding place is the vents, it's not like that's information they should be advertising. He's slow on the uptake but not stupid. 

Green shifts toward Black, leaning into him a bit, trying to convey a sort of solidarity. We're on the same page. "Sorry. This is just…"

"It's a lot," Black agrees, and then turns to the group. "I know Green was with me, but where were the rest of you?"

Orange, Red, White, Yellow, and Brown look between each other. It might be good imagination, but they all seem to subtly shift to put distance between them, and then it hits Green like a botched reentry: one of these people is a killer. 

What follows makes his head spin round and nearly off. Orange and Yellow were together in navigation. Brown saw White in electrical. Black saw Red before he found Green, and for a moment it seems like nothing will come of it all until, in the momentary silence, Red turns to Green.

"You found him, right? And Black found you… later?"

Everyone else turns to him, and wait—no way.

"Yeah, like I said, we met up in the—"

"He's fine," Black interjects again, with force. "Can we end this?"

White makes a calming gesture. "Right. Right, let's just finish our tasks and get this ship running. The sooner we get out of here the better."

"Duh," Orange murmurs. 

Brown, who's hardly said a word the whole time, nods. "Buddy system? I'll go with…" He scans around. "Yellow, I guess."

They pair off, two by two. Green doesn't bother, because Black is still inches away and that seems self-explanatory. When the group disperses, Black heads toward storage without a word, and Green follows, sticking as close as he can without making it awkward. 

The _Skeld_ isn't exactly a first-class ship. It's clean, but only in the way all ships are, because it's not like there's dirt to track around. Some of the paint is starting to peel on the lettering on the walls. The whole thing looks a little desolate, is all, and what before seemed like endearing wear now looks different. The hall looks too long He keeps seeing the blood in his mind, keeps expecting to see it spreading across the corrugated metal floor ahead of Black.

It's just so quiet. Was it always quiet? As they step into storage, the overhead lights flicker once, and Green half-spins to check behind him—right as Black stops. He feels himself lurch into Black, and a little panicked sound escapes him. "Sorry, just a little jumpy—"

Black grabs him and drags him through the door in one motion, and then pins him against the wall. He's fast. Green doesn't scream this time, to his credit, not even when Black leans in so close their helmets almost touch. 

"No one can know about the vents. No one."

Green nods, over-exaggerating the gesture so it comes through the confines of the suit. "Yeah! Yeah, of course."

He's released, and then Black leans back, and when he speaks again his voice is softer, kinder. "You're the only one on this ship I'm sure didn't kill her. Don't do anything stupid." 

Green smiles despite himself. "Yeah. Dude, of course." It's you and me, he doesn't add. 

It turns out they make a good team. Black stands guard while he checks the wiring in storage and grabs extra fuel. The quiet of the ship doesn't seem so ominous when its shared.

"Is this your first assignment?" Green asks.

Black laughs lowly. "No," he says after a moment, and nothing else.

He's cool. That's what it is. Some people exude it, even through the shitty common-issue space suit and helmet. Out of the corner of his eye he tries to size up Black Tall…ish? Earlier he caught a glimpse of his face through the visor, and even though it was hazy with coating MIRA insists is the only thing standing between the fragile mucosal linings of the human body and lethal radiation—a little trite in retrospect, what with the bisection and all—he definitely made out a nose, at least. 

Right? A nose. Sure. Like, a nice one. He sneaks another look while he's filling the fuel canister, and a third while they're walking to the engines. 

"Stop," Black says.

Green stops, and Black turns back to him. 

"I meant stop looking at me." 

Oh. He must be shy.

They're outside of electrical anyway, and there's always something in there that needs doing. Black nods to the door. "I'll keep watch," he offers, and that's something. 

Electrical always gave him the heebie jeebies and that was before all this. He was too much of a wuss to ask for a partner though. This… it's nice. 

"So, were your other assignments like this? Not as exciting, I bet."

There's a noncommittal grunt from the door, and nothing else. Green forges ahead.

"How'd you figure out the vents anyway?"

Silence.

"You know what's weird? I keep wondering like, who cut all these wires, you know? That's weird, right?" Black doesn't respond and it occurs to him to be embarrassed. "Or is it like space rats or something?" Still nothing. "I guess you've seen worse, huh." And this time the silence really is a kind of answer. 

When he's done he meets Black outside the door, who looks about the same as he did before though there's a smear of something wet across the front of his suit.

"You've got something there," Green motions to Black's chest, which has a splat of dark liquid across it. 

"It's… oil. From the, you know. The rear axial. Distributor." He waves at a panel on the wall, a panel which Green thought was an extra trash chute, but evidently not.

"Thanks," Green says, and means it. "Sometimes it feels like I'm the only one who actually cares about getting us all out of here alive, you know?" A friend who can keep guard and so tasks is a friend indeed. Black looks taken aback by the appreciation, as much as anyone in a since suit can. "Engines next?"

"Sure, yeah, let's go." Black grabs his arm again, handsy, though Green is minding less and less, and then drags him in the direction of the reactor. 

About ten steps from the engine room, it happens. The lights shift to red, and the low drone of the alarm that means—something? Something bad. No something good… Black pulls them both to a stop.

"What's that for?"

Black doesn't answer and this is the first time he's seemed unsure in the entire time they've known each other—so, a day and a half, but you know. That's like a lifetime in space years. Or something. Time works different in space, at least, he remembers that much.

"It's the reactor," Black says at last, sounding less panicked and more put upon. 

"The—the nuclear reactor? Like, the engine?"

"No, the one in the cafeteria."

"There's a reactor in the cafeteria?"

"No. Come on."

It's a short run but something about the flashing red lights and imminent death and fifty pounds of gear has him huffing for air and fogging up the inside of his helmet by the time they get to the reactor. Black pushes him to the right and runs to the scanner on the left. No one’s explained to him how the scanners can pick up their fingerprints through the gloves but whatever. When it’s done, the panel flashes and the lights come back on in soothing, artificial white. 

Green collapses on the railing beside Black. “What happened? What was that?”

“Sabotage.”

“Sabotage? Wait, like, someone really wants us dead?” 

Black levels a look at him that bites even through the helmet. Maybe, in the back of his mind, he figured Pink deserved it for not cleaning up after himself when he knew Green had dinner duty--it made a sort of cosmic sense. 

“Oh man…” Green grips the sides of his head and wishes he could take his helmet off because the only thing worse than freaking out on a spaceship is freaking out in a helmet on a spaceship. Black reaches down and awkwardly pats his shoulder. 

“It’s probably going to be fine,” Black offers in monotone. 

Right as he says it, the lights turn red again, and a voice comes over the intercom. 

“There’s a body in the cafeteria.”

* * *

Green hangs off Black’s arm the entire way there, giving up all pretense of coolness. He’s shaking a little and keeps whipping around to check behind them. Somehow, Black is still solid as a rock.

“Why are you freaking out? Nothing is going to happen to you in the hall.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’m here,” he says, like Green is dumb, and that’s quite the declaration, but then Black adds, “No one is stupid enough to attack two people at once.” 

Oh. Right. When they get to the cafeteria, Red and White are already there. Orange comes stumbling in a few moments later, clearly out of breath. “What happened?”

Red, who somehow manages to convey a roll of his eyes without moving at all, says, “I found Yellow’s dismembered corpse in comms. Someone tried to hide the body behind the door. Disgusting.”

“Was it cut in half again?” Green asks. 

No one replies for a moment. Black actually puts his face in his palm. “Green… what the fuck, man.”

“I’m just asking! That seems like important information!”

Orange looks between him and Black. “Where were you anyway?”

“He was with me the entire time,” Black says, sounding bored, like this is all part of business as usual and none of them are in any danger at all.

“How do I know it’s not both of you then?”

In answer, Black gestures at Green, as if that’s all the information anyone needs--and that’s almost touching, that he has that much faith. “All I know is wires, man,” Green says to back him up.

Orange shrugs and then glances around the table. “Wait… Where’s Brown?” 

He’s not in the room. Green kind of cranes his neck toward the door, just to check, but no. He’s nowhere in sight. White looks around the room. “Weren’t… you and he supposed to be together?”

“Well, yeah, but he had to do something in navigation while I was figuring out shields…”

As one, they turn to the door against the wall, the one that leads to the main bridge, which is still as well-lit as the cafeteria but seems suddenly ominous and dark. It can’t be. It’s just not logical--how do they lose half the crew in a few hours?

But sure enough, they make their way as a unit of five in a line, with Black bringing up the rear right behind Green, his presence there the only thing keeping Green from freaking out fully, and as soon as they round the door there’s the corpse. This one isn’t bisected, but merely bled out from what looks like no less than five stab wounds in the side of his suit, which seems excessive. 

Green turns into Black and grips the front of his suit, because there are limits to how much a person can deal with in a day without needing a hug and it turns out one and one half bodies, a reactor meltdown, and a messy cafeteria are about it. What problem could anyone have with Brown, anyway? He was the only one of them that consistently emptied the trash chute anyway. Black seems momentarily stunned by the contact before he, perhaps reluctantly, sets a hand on the back of Green’s helmet. At least there’s one thing he can still believe in on this ship, one point of sanity.

“Who could have done this?” White asks, grief coloring her voice. “Orange, why did you let him go alone?”

“Yeah, _why?_ ” asks Red.

“We’re supposed to be buddies,” Green moans. “We had a system, man.”

“Speaking of, where’s your buddy, White? Oh, that’s right, you didn’t have one. Always too good for the rest of us, huh? Always so willing—”

“I think it was Orange,” Red submits, cutting off his rant. Black nods. White folds her arms and nods, and Red shrugs. “Three’s a crowd.”

“No, are you stupid? Are you guys serious?” Orange starts backing toward the wall--

The wall with the airlock door on it.

* * *

“I can’t believe it was him--I can’t believe he killed three people. Three people are dead, man.”

“Yeah,” Black sighs. “Pretty unbelievable.”

“But we’re safe now.” 

Black stops in the hallway ahead of him and for the first time looks actually tired, like this whole thing is getting to him. Green steps close enough to put a hand on his arm and says as softly as the helmet will allow, “It’s going to be okay. I know this is all… crazy, but we’ve got each other. That’s something, right?”

Instead of replying, Black sighs, and then says in his old monotone, “What do you have left to do?”

He hasn’t checked the wiring in the security room, but that’s it. Black follows him there, a step behind, and watches in silence as Green gets the panel off the wall and starts twisting wires back together. They’re repairs meant to get the ship back to MIRA headquarters--nothing sustainable, nothing to get the ship travel-ready, but the equivalent of a spare tire, just buying them time. He used to love repair jobs like this but now every moment he’s facing the panel feels like a moment he might turn around and see Black on the floor, the pool of blood he’s now seen two times too many slowly filling the space between them.

With one eye he sneaks a glance. Black is leaning against the desk, arms folded, watching him, still whole and healthy. 

And then motion catches his eye, on the screen to the left. The screen with the security cameras. There’s movement there--two figures that can only be Red and White, moving across the screen. Actually, only Red is moving. White is faced toward the panel outside navigation and Red is moving behind her, getting closer. 

It happens too fast for the camera to pick up with its shitty frame rate. One moment White is standing, and the next she’s on the floor, and what can only be blood is spilling down her suit, spreading across the floor— 

“Oh, shit.”

Green stumbles back from the wiring panel and then falls, forgetting the extra weight of the gear on his back as he tips over into the hallway. It would hurt if he weren’t so well padded. Black watches him, and then turns to the screen, and as they both watch, Red disappears from the camera view. Black says nothing and doesn’t twitch. Not even when the vent in the corner makes a sound and then the grate begins to lift. Red climbs out, and it’s so simple, it’s so subtle--like the peeling paint on the letting in the hallways, like the strewn wiring on the floor of electrical, something so mundane and yet so wrong. 

“You?” Green asks. 

Red tilts his head to one side, and then looks at Black, who’s no longer leaning on the desk, but not moving either. “Well, way to go dumbass. Now we’ve got a spare.”

_A spare._

Green looks between them, trying to make it make sense, as Red reaches into the pack on his back. 

“Don’t,” Black says and steps in front of Green, which might have been comforting even five seconds ago but isn’t now. 

Red snorts. “Don’t what? That’s a witness. I can’t believe this shit,” he mutters and pulls out what looks like a knife--until he flicks a switch on the side, and oh, that’s how you cut a body in half. He feels numb. This can’t be happening.

He watches in horror as Red turns toward him and rolls his shoulders in a small shrug that could almost be an apology before he steps forward—

“Wait! Can you just…. Can you answer one question for me?” 

Red flips the blade. “If it’s _why,_ the answer is for the money, of course. Sorry to disappoint. It’s nothing personal.” 

“No--not that.” Green takes a breath and thinks about it, thinks about what he wants his last words to be, his last bit of truth in this world, and asks, “What did you do with the other half of Pink’s body?” 

Dead silence, and then Red’s helmet shifts toward Black. “I don’t know. What did you do with his body?”

“Put him in the vent.”

If Green weren’t already on the floor, he’d fall over. “In the vent we were in? In _our_ vent?”

Black puts his hand over his face again and Red lowers the knife, slowly. “You saw him… in the vent? And you didn’t say anything?”

Green pounds the floor with his fist. “I thought it was our thing!”

“Okay, well,” Red motions to Black, “You’re an idiot, and that’s enough with the Q and A, I think. You wanna take care of this, since it’s your mess?”

Black pulls his hand from his face. “Yeah. Fine.” 

Green swallows as Black pulls a wicked knife from the gear on his back and he was wrong before, he realizes-- _that’s_ how you cut a person in half. It really was him, the entire time, right from the start, but why? He wishes he had time to ask one more question because that would be it. Why not him?

“You could have killed me a dozen times,” Green says faintly. “Why did you let me live?”

Black sighs, once more. “I wish I knew,” he says, and then brings the knife up--and rams it straight into Red’s neck. 

They both watch as Red puts one hand to the cut and tries to say something that sounds like it might be inappropriate, before he falls to the floor. 

He twitches as he bleeds out. Black offers Green a hand, so he can stand and avoid the mess. “Let’s get out of this shithole.” For the first time, he doesn’t sound monotone or bored or tired, but maybe the slightest bit excited. Green squeezes his hand as Black steps around the body and leads him out the door. 

“So, you were a double agent this whole time?”

“...Sure.”

**Author's Note:**

> [[fic on twitter](https://twitter.com/arahir/status/1310014662704918528)]
> 
> "isn't that title low hanging fruit" IT IS... IT REALLY IS... MUCH LIKE MY TACTIC OF ACCUSING PEOPLE I DISLIKE WHEN I GET CALLED OUT IN WEREWOLF, AND YET...

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] impostor syndrome by arahir](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26686309) by [taikodragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/taikodragon/pseuds/taikodragon)




End file.
